Category: Kids – All Ages

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The Dandy Book 1970


By Many & various (D.C. Thomson & Co.)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-008-5 (HB)

For generations of British fans Christmas means The Beano Book, The Broons, Oor Wullie and making every December 25th magical. There used to be many more DC Thomson titles, but the years have gradually winnowed them away. Thankfully, time means nothing here, so this year I’m concentrating on a another Thomson Christmas cracker that made me the man wot I am. As usual my knowledge of the creators involved is woefully inadequate but I’m going to hazard a few guesses anyway, in the hope that someone with better knowledge will correct me when I err.

The Dandy comic predated The Beano by eight months, utterly revolutionising the way children’s publications looked and – most importantly – how they were read. Over decades it produced a bevy of household names that delighted millions of households, with end of year celebrations being bumper bonanzas of the weekly stars in magnificent bumper hardback annuals.

Premiering on December 4th December 1937, The Dandy broke the mould of its hidebound British predecessors by using word balloons and captions rather than narrative blocks of text under the sequential picture frames. A colossal success, it was followed on July 30th 1938 by The Beano and together they completely changed children’s publications. Dandy was the third longest running comic in the world (behind Italy’s Il Giornalino – launched in 1924 – and America’s Detective Comics in March 1937).

Over the decades the “terrible twins” spawned countless cartoon stars of unforgettable and beloved household names who delighted generations of avid and devoted readers…

The fun-filled action begins on the inside front cover as seasoned star Korky the Cat (by Charles Grigg?) set the ball rolling as he dodges the rozzers after a spot of illicit angling. As was traditional at this time, he also performed similar service at the far end – there falling foul of his own meagre engineering skills after building a triple decker “cartie” (think of the Red Bull Soapbox Challenge but sans the manic testosterone overload…)

These annuals were traditionally produced in the wonderful “half-colour” that many British publishers used to keep costs down whilst bringing a little spark into our drab and gloomy young lives. This was done by printing sections of the books with two plates, such as blue/Cyan and red/Magenta. The versatility and palette range provided was astounding. Even now this technique screams “Holidays” to me and my contemporaries, and this volume uses the technique to stunning effect.

D.C. Thomson were also extremely adept at combining anarchic, clownish comedy with solid fantasy adventure tales such as opening comedy thriller ‘King of the Sawdust Ring’ (limned by Paddy Brennan) wherein circus boy Billy King has to recapture an escaped lion and save his pet deer when a parade through town goes badly wrong…

As seen here, these picture thrillers usually came in the old-fashioned captioned format, with blocks of typeset text rather than lettered word balloons. Drama gives way to daft destruction as cowboy superman Desperate Dan (by Dudley D. Watkins) gets lost in fog, whilst another Korky the Cat short wreaks havoc in an ironmonger’s shop before his picture puzzle ‘Twig the Twins!’ – by the always-magnificent Eric Roberts – tests mind and eye.

The Smasher was a lad cut from the same mould as Dennis the Menace and in the episodes here (by Hugh Morren) he carves a characteristic swathe of anarchic destruction, even if his first encounter proves he’s not the toughest lad in town…

Drawn by Ron Spencer, pint-sized Dinah Mite proves she has no need of martial arts training after which hard-pressed squaddie Corporal Clott (by Dennis the Menace originator Davy Law or possibly his successor David Sutherland) disrupts the Army Camp sports day and accidentally and painfully boosts surly Colonel Grumbly to undreamed of heights.

Drawn by Jimmy Hughes, Bully Beef and Chips invariably proved that a weedy underdog’s brain always trumped brutal brawn, as here where little Chips orchestrates a well-deserved water-pistol drubbing…

Eric Roberts does triple-duty this year with puzzles, schoolboy grifter Winker Watson and perennial bath-dodger Dirty Dick who here plays chalk-based pranks on the police, after which Winker Watson’s Dandy Doodles baffle and bemuse before crafty Korky is outsmarted by a peg-legged sailor…

Another package of light-hearted drama then ensues courtesy of schoolboy Charley Brand and his robotic pal ‘Brassneck’– by the fabulous Bill Holroyd – who are largely innocent spectators as Christmas Day devolves into a toy and snowball brawl for all the adults in the street, after which Desperate Dan learns the cost of his well-meaning but excessive generosity and Dinah Mite discovers another benefit to small size and big muscles at a football match…

Bully Beef and Chips then clash whilst fishing which segues into a tale of The Island of Monsters (drawn by Q-Bikes artist Andrew Hutton?): a thrilling castaway series with two boys marooned on a tropical paradise where all the animals are incredibly enlarged. This time, the lads witness the results of human pirates underestimating the power and ferocity of giant gulls, beetles, bees and grasshoppers…

Next ‘Dirty Dick’s Picture Puzzle’ tests our brains before Korky’s superstitious nature pays off in a fish supper and our little Dick pops back, finally meeting his match in an escaped zoo chimp in a grubby but great strip by (perhaps) Tom Williams.

Whilst a great deal of material was based on school as seen by pupils, George Martin’s ‘Greedy Pigg’ featured a voracious teacher always attempting to confiscate and scoff his pupils’ snacks. Here he abandons kids’ tuck boxes to extend his appetite to encompass the pantries and larders of adults and even a wandering tramp gets what he deserves…

Dinah Mite then returns to train her new gang to the peak of punishing fitness, after which Desperate Dan’s heavy-footed antics wreck the skating pond and The Smasher takes three pages to ponder his job when he grows up.

Korky’s parrot declares war on the cat but comes to regret allying with the mice, whilst Corporal Clott successfully spoils target practice and Dirty Dick cleans up as golf caddy.

Jimmy Hughes’ geriatric delinquent Smarty Gran’pa mentors little kids in scrumping, pranking and dodging coppers whilst Corporal Clott wrecks record-keeping and penmanship before we return to drama as ‘Ricky’s Racer’ (probably by Brennan) sees a poor but proud kid master a found sledge: tearing up the icy landscape, making friends with a rich toff’s son and even foiling a burglary in a ripping yarn only DC Thomson could pull off…

A brutal training regime pays off in scoff for The Smasher’s new gang, before Bully Beef and Chips escalate a darts match into armoured warfare heralding classic comedy japes in a posh private school…

Winker Watson was always a triumph for artistic legend Eric Roberts, who here turns a visiting TV documentary crew into the spur for another string of victories against boarding school tyranny. Our devious mastermind easily humiliates the masters and treats his chums to a “slap-up feed” of the kind ‘Greedy Pigg’ constantly contrived to steal.

In a neat segue, George Martin’s voracious pie predator is led to his “just desserts” by toffee apples stuck on arrows before Robert returns with picture teaser ‘Winker Watson’s Class for Clever Dicks’ – combining comedy with brain testing scenarios before Dirty Dick encounters a military mascot and learns how the army deal with dust and disarray…

Korky’s flying lessons soon bring him into dispute with squadrons of geese, after which family favourite ‘Spunky and his Spider’ offers another delightfully rustic tale of an affable, truanting kid and his devoted, amiable apple-loving, giant antediluvian arachnid as limned by the fabulous Bill Holroyd. This time the eight-legged wonder helps school kids beat bullies trying to snatch the cash made from carol-singing…

Greedy Pigg’s appetite and lack of scruples scupper him again just as Desperate Dan’s snow balls make him lots of enemies whilst Bodger the Bookworm (by Shamus O’Doherty) uses some novel notions to retrieve a confiscated ball before the fun climaxes with the saga of Barefoot Bill (Hutton again?): a schoolboy whose gigantic feet and love of soccer forced him to learn to play sans footwear…

With Puzzle Answers and the aforementioned Korky endpapers wrapping up proceedings, let’s celebrate another tremendously fun book, with so much merriment on offer I can’t believe this book is over half a century old and still available through second hand outlets.

The only thing better would by curated archive reissues and digital editions…
© 1968 D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

The DANDY is a trademark of and © D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. 2006. Associated characters, text and artwork © D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. 2006. All rights reserved.

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Hurricane Annual 1968


By Many & various (Fleetway)
No ISBN:

From the late 1950s and increasingly through the 1960s, Scotland’s DC Thomson steadily overtook their London-based competition – primarily monolithic comics publishing giant Amalgamated Press. Founded by Alfred Harmsworth at the beginning of the twentieth century, AP sought to regain lost ground, and the sheer variety of material the southerners unleashed as countermeasures offered incredible vistas in adventure and – thanks to the defection of Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid to the enemy – eventually found a wealth of anarchic comedy material to challenge the likes of the Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and their unruly kin.

During the latter end of that period the Batman TV show sent the entire world superhero-crazy. Amalgamated had almost finished absorbing all its local rivals – such as The Eagle‘s Hulton Press – to form Fleetway/Odhams/IPC and were about to incorporate American-styled superheroes into their heady brew of weekly thrills.

Once the biggest player in children’s comics, Amalgamated had stayed at the forefront of sales by latching onto every fad: keeping their material contemporary, if not strictly fresh. The all-consuming company began reprinting early Marvel Comics successes for a few years: feeding on the growing fashion for US style adventure which had largely supplanted the rather tired True-Blue Brit style of Dan Dare or DC Thompson’s Wolf of Kabul.

Even though sales of all British comics were generally – and in some cases, drastically -declining, the 1960s were a period of intense and impressive innovation with publishers embracing new sensibilities; constantly trying new types of character and tales. At this time Valiant and its stable-mate Lion were the Boys’ Adventure big guns (although nothing could touch DC Thomson’s Beano and Dandy in the comedy arena).

Hurricane was an impressive-looking upgrade that began during that period of expansion and counterattack, apparently conceived in response to DCT’s action weekly Hornet. It launched the week of February 29th 1964 and ran for 63 issues, but was revamped three times during that period before ultimately being merged into companion paper Tiger.

It carried a superbly varied roster of features in that time, including two (and a half) stars who survived its extinction. Racing driver Skid Solo and comedy superman Typhoon Tracy as well as Sgt Rock – Paratrooper… but not for so long for him…

There was heavy dependence on European and South American artists initially, among them Mario Capaldi, Nevio Zeccara, Georgio Trevisan, Renato Polese and Lino Landolfi, some of whom lasted into the Annuals. As with so many titles, although the comics might quickly fade, Christmas Annuals maintained a presence for years after and Hurricane seasonal specials were produced for every year from 1965 to 1974…

Following a tried-&-true formula, this book – published in 1967 – offers comics adventures, prose stories, fact-features, funnies and puzzles and kicks off with stunning full-colour fact feature strip ‘Lawmen and Badmen of the Wild West’.

Looking  like they’re painted by Reg Bunn or Tony Weare, these comics outline the lives and times of Wyatt Earp, Tom Smith, Black Bart, Sam Bass, Billy the Kid and Bat Masterson, before fully fictional western star Drago teaches a headstrong young cavalry officer the meaning of command in monochrome thriller ‘He Rides Alone’ – possibly illustrated by Polese.

Regular prose feature ‘The Worst Boy in the School’ (illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam?) follows a page of medical gags entitled ‘Take a dose of Chuckles!’ The long-running boarding school saga was enlivened by its star Duffy coming from Circus stock. Here the comedy, chaos and espionage excitement stems from a New Boy who’s convinced enemies of his father – a South American president – are trying to kidnap him. He’s not wrong…

Returning to monochrome strips, ‘Sgt. Rock – Special Air Service’ ferrets out Nazi infiltrators masquerading as American GIs before we switch back to fact for a photo-feature offering capacious coverage of modern British military might in ‘The Army Marches on its Wheels!’ whilst the comedy capers of ‘Rod the Odd Mod and ‘is old pal Percy Vere’ literally bring the house down when he gets the Hi Fi bug.

‘Casey and the Champ’ stars a veteran railroad man and his steam engine who here reveal in strip form the unlikely salvation of a played-out mining town as prelude to photo feature ‘Why Not Go by Balloon?’ before heading to 1804 where Regency prize-fighter Jim Trim stumbles upon a Napoleonic plot to conquer England in ‘Two Fists Against the World!’ (perhaps illustrated by Carlos Roume)…

Prose yarn ‘Carlos of the Wild Horses’ details the story of conquistadores imperilled by rebellious Aztecs and saved by the bond between the governor’s young son and a herd of mustangs and is followed by text fact-features ‘War Dogs’ – commemorating canines in combat – and ‘Atlantic Greyhounds’ explaining why the glory days of cruise liners had passed and why they could be built no bigger. Ah, the joys of schadenfreude and hindsight in action…

Next is a prose-&-photo precis current of movie release ‘The Train’(starring Burt Lancaster, but I’d never heard of it): a tale of Nazi collaboration and pursuit of transport of stolen art, followed by photo feature ‘When Nature Turns Nasty!’ before the incontestable star of Hurricane thunders in on a wave of colour illustration. ‘The Juggernaut from Planet Z’ is again despatched to aid his Earth chum Dr. Dan Morgan only to be overridden – and temporarily enslaved – by crazed would-be dictator General Zeb.

Sport next as ‘Hurry of the Hammers’ finds the football star in black-&-white and almost deprived of club and grounds by an unscrupulous new owner more interested in profit than the beautiful game. Historical factual strip ‘They Climbed… the Matterhorn’ then leads to a prose outing for the worst ship in the WWII navy. One again confounding the British Admiralty and escaping being broken up for parts in ‘HMS Outcast – Pride of the Fleet’ sees Geoff Campion’s unruly mob save the Pacific flotilla from destruction by the Japanese using ping pong balls and tomato sauce…

‘Typhoon Tracy’s Lucky Strike!’ finds the mighty moron in Alaska, battling bears, triggering a gold rush and helping an old friend stave off poverty, after which Giovanni Ticci employs duo-colour to limn a superbly light-hearted ‘Sword for Hire’ romp starring Cavalier soldier-of-fortune Hugo Dinwiddie who saves a fugitive king’s agent from capture even while acting as an unwilling substitute for a duellist.

Reverting to prose, ‘The Terrible Revenge of Dr. Parvo’ stars atomic accident survivors Ace Sutton and Flash Casey who use their journalistic skills and ability to walk through walls to stop a madman weaponizing weather, after which strip ‘Danger at Manakee Deep’ details a futuristic undersea habitat and resource factory endangered by greed and treachery.

‘Rodeo!’ traces the history of the sport with photos front the Calgary Stampede whilst monochrome strip ‘The Ragged Racer’ offers early environmental activism from its Wildman hero as he thwarts a circus’ scheme to destroy his mountainous animal preserve and gag page ‘It’s a Dog’s Laugh!’ brings us the text cover feature ‘R.A.F. to the Rescue’ outlining the history and activities of the coastal guardians.

The prose perseveres with adventure yarn ‘The Fiery Furnaces’ as two roving sportsmen accidentally dethrone a South American tyrant with delusions of grandeur (with illustrations by either Nevio Zaccara or Alfredo Giolitti) before ‘Rod the Odd Mod and ‘is old pal Percy Vere’ endure a calamitous bath night…

Sport was a major fascination of publishers at this time and ‘Soccer Special by The Ref’ opens an extended section of pictorial mini-features comprising ‘Famous Captains before they were Famous’, ‘Soccer Trophies Worth Winning’ and ‘Strange Things Happen in Soccer’ before we all ride off into the sunset, ending with comic strip masked cowboy ‘The Black Avenger’ who chases and then saves a “white magician” stirring up Indian tribes.

Eclectic, wide-ranging and always of majestically high quality, this blend of fact, fiction, fun and thrills is a splendid evocation of lost days of joy and wonder. We may not be making books like this anymore but at least they’re still relatively easy to track down. Of course, what’s really needed is for some sagacious publisher to start re-issuing them…
© Fleetway Publications Ltd., 1967

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The Outer Limits Annual 1966


By Paul S. Newman(?) & Jack Sparling, & various (World Distributors {Manchester} Limited)
No ISBN. ASIN: B0042Q9PAE (HB)

British Comics have always fed heavily on other media and as television grew during the 1960s – especially the area of children’s shows and cartoons – those programmes increasingly became a staple source for the Seasonal Annual market. There would be a profusion of stories and strips targeting not readers but young viewers and more and more often the stars would be American not British.

Much of this stuff wouldn’t even be as popular in the USA as here, so whatever comic licenses existed usually didn’t provide enough material to fill a hardback volume ranging anywhere from 64 to 160 pages. Thus, many Annuals such as Daktari, Champion the Wonder Horse, Lone Ranger and a host of others required original material or, as a last resort, similarly-themed or related strips. That’s not the case here…

The Outer Limits launched in the USA on September 16th 1963, running until January 16th 1965: two seasons comprising 49 self-contained episodes of an anthological science fiction series with no returning stars where drama, suspense and uncanny situations beguiled paranoid, culturally shell-shocked audiences seeking a brief release from real-world threats like the Cold War and Cost of Living. Like contemporary rival show The Twilight Zone, it was sold all over the world and developed a fanatically devoted fanbase, thereby achieving a kind of immortality, with modern reboots and merchandising.

Comic book franchising specialist Gold Key produced a series of 18 issues spanning March 1964 to October 1969, running almost half a decade beyond the show’s cancellation (but presumably sustained by regional TV syndication). They were part of print monolith western Publishing whose Dell Comics, Gold Key, Big Little, Little Golden and Golden Press books for children were a staple of kids’ lives in America for decades.

Western Publishing was a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed material including newspaper strips, TV and Disney titles, (such as Nancy and Sluggo, Tarzan, or The Lone Ranger) with home-grown hits like Turok, Son of Stone and Magnus, Robot Fighter.

Their output was an ideal perfect source of material for British publishers whose regular audiences were profoundly addicted to TV and movie properties. For decades, Western’s comics from The Impossibles and Bugs Bunny to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek filled our Christmas treats and also slipped in some original character concepts.

“All Killer and No Filler”, this book – the second of two Outer Limits editions – was produced in a non-standard UK format, with full-colour for three American reprints and nothing else: no prose pieces, puzzles, games or fact-features on related themes. It looks and feels like it’s one from the wonderful Mick Anglo’s packaging company Gower Studios, however and I’m fairly certain the originals were scripted by prolific wonder Paul S. Newman (Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom, Space Family Robinson, Turok, The Lone Ranger)

There’s no doubt the illustrator was the uniquely stylish and equally prolific John Edmond “Jack” Sparling (Hap Hopper, Washington Correspondent, Claire Voyant, Doc Savage, Challengers of the Unknown, Unknown Soldier, Captain America) who in sterling fashion produced this trio of terrors…

‘The Dread Discovery’ debuted in quarterly issue #5 (April 1965) and is set in a NASA base where Peter Norton, with his pals Andy and Fred, accidentally shoot down a flying saucer with their model rocket. The kids’ parents all work on-base and are – eventually – delighted to meet the vessel’s occupant. FR-2 is a defector from his own people, arriving in advance of their invasion fleet and willing to give his life to save humanity…

The Outer Limits #6 (July 1965) recounted the saga of ‘The Mystery Moon’ wherein little Jim Burke is abducted by aliens when he exposes their seeming mission of mercy as a devious scheme to fling earth out of orbit. Luckily for humanity, the lad’s a lot smarter and more cunning than his kidnappers…

The brooding mystery and omnipresent menace conclude with ‘The Message from Space’ (#8, July 1966) as radio-astronomer Arthur Godderd decodes a communication from distant star 102 Beta and has his chemist chum Charles Dilling mix up the resulting formula. When sunlight hits the goo, it super-expands and attacks civilisation on multiple fronts. Seemingly unstoppable, the glob is only countered when all the previously warring nations on Earth act in unison in accordance with a crazy theory put forward by desperate Dr. Dilling…

Quirky but chilling, and always applying sound scientific principles to the most outlandish plot circumstances, this is a superb scare package for kids in the manner of Goosebumps and well worth a latter-day revisit.
© MCMLVX, MCMLVXI by Daystar-Villa Di Stefano-United Artists Television. All rights reserved throughout the world.

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Superman Annual 1963-1964


By Jerry Siegel, Edmund Hamilton, Bill Woolfolk, Ed Herron, Alvin Schwartz, Dave Wood, Henry Boltinoff, George Papp, Curt Swan, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, Jack Kirby, Lee Elias & various (Atlas Publishing and distributing Co./K.G. Murray)
No ISBN:

Before DC and other American publishers began exporting comic books directly into the UK in 1959, our exposure to their unique brand of fantasy fun came from licensed reprints. Seemingly ubiquitous British publishers/printers like Len Miller, Alan Class and Top Sellers bought US material – and occasionally Canadian – to fill 68-page monochrome anthologies, many of which recycled the same stories for decades.

Less commonplace were strangely coloured pamphlets produced by Australian outfit K. G. Murray: exported to the UK in a rather sporadic manner. The company also produced sturdy Annuals which had a huge impact on my earliest years (I suspect my abiding adulation of monochrome artwork stems from seeing supreme stylists like Curt Swan, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson strut their stuff uncluttered by flat colour…).

In Britain we began seeing hardcover Superman Annuals in 1950, Superboy Annuals in 1953, Super AdventureAnnuals in 1959 and Batman books in 1960. Since then many publishers have carried on the tradition. This particular tome comes from 1963 as the super-hero craze was barely beginning, allowing us to see a range of transitional material that fell between the Golden and Silver Ages …

This particular tome predates the Batman TV show that turned the entire planet Camp-Crazed and Bat-Manic, and therefore provides a delightfully eclectic mix of material far more in keeping with traditionally perceived interests of British boys than the suited-&-booted masked madness that was soon to follow in the Caped Crusader’s scalloped wake.

It’s also produced in the cheap and quirky mix of monochrome, dual-hued and weirdly full-coloured pages which made Christmas books such a bizarrely beloved treat.

The sublime suspense and joyous adventuring begins with a rare treat as in black, blue and red on white, we meet ‘The Menace from the Stars!’ by Bill Woolfolk, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye, coming from World’s Finest Comics #68 (January/February 1954) in which a brush with a Green Kryptonite-infused asteroid gives the Man of Steel amnesia.

Happily, before he can inadvertently expose his secret identity, another sudden impact sets things aright, just as Green Arrow clashes with a devious criminal, necessitating the inexplicable side-lining of Boy Bowman Speedy and recruitment of ‘The Legion of 100 Archers!’: an anonymously-authored yarn drawn by George Papp and originating in Adventure Comics #189 (June 1953).

British books always preferred to alternate action with short gag strips, and Murray Line perfectly exploited the phenomenal DC output of cartoonist Henry Boltinoff, whose various gag-strip stars acted as palate-cleansing chapter breaks between dramas. Here a convict conundrum for ‘Warden Willis’ and bedtime woes for ‘Moolah the Mystic’ presage another archery adventure as the Battling Bowmen meet ‘The Amazing Miss Arrowette’.

Taken from WFC #113 (November 1960), the painfully parochial and patronising tone of the times seeped into the saga (scripted by Dave Wood and limned by Lee Elias) as a hopeful, ambitious Ladies’ Archery competitor tries her very best to become Green Arrow’s main helpmeet. Moreover, in a series notorious for absurd gimmick shafts, nothing ever came close to surpassing the Hair-Pin, Needle-and-Thread, Powder-Puff or Lotion Arrows stashed in Bonnie King‘s fetching and stylish little quiver…

Quirky colour returns with gag strips ‘Pop’ and ‘Jail Jests’ before the Man of Tomorrow recalls ‘The Girls in Superman’s Life’ in a slightly reformatted by Edmond Hamilton & Al Plastino from Superman #78 (September/October 1952) bring an adult Lana Lang into the full-grown hero’s life as a rival for Lois Lane and suspicious stalker of Clark Kent…

‘Moolah the Mystic’ and ‘Warden Willis’ japes precede a return to monochrome and a spectacular Jack Kirby GA extravaganza from WFC #97 (October 1958). ‘The Menace of the Mechanical Octopus!’ is a grand old-school high-tech crime-caper scripted by Ed Herron and inked by Roz Kirby.

Superman #137 (May 1960) then delivers an epic sci fi shocker in ‘The Super-Brat from Krypton!’ (Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan & John Forte), revealing how an energy duplicate of baby Kal-El was raised in secret by Earth criminals to become ‘The Young Super-Bully’ before finally confronting his noble counterpart in ‘Superman vs. Super-Menace!’

Slapstick colour interludes from ‘Hy Wire’ and ‘Fireman Pete’ segue neatly into doomsday drama as an unknown writer, Boring & Kaye unearth ‘Jor-El’s Last Will!’ (WFC #69 March/April 1954) and sees the Man of Tomorrow strive to save his adopted home from his father’s deadliest inventions.

Fact fillers were also popular and a ‘Quick Quiz’ and one more ‘Hy Wire’ gag brings us back to black-&-white as Green Arrow tackles the lethally informative threat of alternative fact distributor ‘Crime’s TV Station’ in a canny teaser from Adventure Comics #197 (February 1954) before killer fillers ‘Science Says You’re Wrong’, ‘Scientific Word Origins’ and ‘Jerry the Jitterbug’ herald ‘The Return of Miss Arrowette’ by Wood & Elias from WFC#118 (June 1961) which proves far less cringeworthy than her debut but still manages to make the Bow Babe both competent and imbecilic at the same time.

One last stab at colour sees ‘Science Says You’re Wrong’ and ‘Jerry the Jitterbug’ lay the groundwork for ‘Batman – Double for Superman’ by Alvin Schwartz,  Swan & Kaye from World’s Finest Comics #71, July/August 1954. A landmark piece made in response to economic circumstances, it details the first official team-up of Superman and Batman…

With dwindling page counts, rising costs but a proven readership and years of co-starring but never mingling, it saw the Man of Tomorrow and the Gotham Gangbuster in the first of their shared cases as the merely mortal hero traded identities to save his Kryptonian comrade’s alter ego and, latterly, life…

Simple, straightforward action-adventure never goes out of style and these tales could as easily beguile today’s young scamps as they did my lot. Worth a shot, right?
© National Periodical Publications, Inc., New York.  Published by arrangement with the K.G. Murray Publishing Company, Pty. Ltd., Sydney.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck volume 5: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” by Carl Barks


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-697-3 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Utter Acme of All-Ages Entertainment… 10/10

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, growing up in the rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as a animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books.

With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated cartoon short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year and – although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of his career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion, writing and drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable and highly bankable characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged septuagenarian and the harassed, hard-pressed star of this show.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked and contributing stories to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney strips – in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed…

So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly the animated series Duck Tales: heavily based on his comics output.

Most notably, Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

Throughout his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his work (uncredited by official policy as was all Disney’s cartoon and comicbook output), had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist.” When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, his belated celebrity began.

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261 mm – that would grace any bookshelf, with volume 5 – Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” (for reasons irrelevant here) acting as debut release, re-presenting works from 1947 – albeit not in strictly chronological release order.

It begins eponymously with landmark introduction of Bark’s most enduring creation. Scrooge McDuck premiered in seasonal full-length Donald Duck yarn ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ (Four Color #178 December 1947): a mere disposable comedy foil to move along a simple tale of Seasonal woe and joy. Here a miserly relative seethed in opulent isolation, hating everybody and opting to share the gloom by tormenting his nephews Donald, Huey, Louie and Dewey by gifting them his mountain cabin for the Holidays. Scrooge schemed, intent on terrorising them in a bear costume, but fate had other ideas…

The old coot  was crusty, energetic, menacing, money-mad and yet oddly lovable – and thus far too potentially valuable to be misspent or thrown away. Undoubtedly, the greatest cartoon creation of the legendary and magnificent story showman Carl Barks, the Downy Dodecadillionaire returned often and eventually expanded to fill all available space in the tales from the scenic metropolis of Duckburg.

From the same issue a brace of one-page gags expose Donald’s views on car culture in ‘Fashion in Flight‘ and annoying people looking for directions in ‘Turn for the Worse’ before

‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories#80, May) turns into another painful and humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries getting rich by growing blooms…

June’s WDC&S #81 finds him and the kids prospecting and running foul of the post-war arms and rocket-race in ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ before Four Color #147 (May) takes them on an epic voyage of fantastic discovery to ‘Volcano Valley’ after accidentally buying an army surplus bomber…

Always looking for a quick buck, Donald and the kids turn to commercial charters: flying innocuous-seeming Major Pablo Mañana back to Central American beauty-spot Volcanovia, but they all have a devilishly difficult time getting out again. This yarn sets a solid pattern for Bark’s adventure/travelogue yarns in years to come, blending comedy, thrills, whimsy and social commentary into an irresistible treat…

WDC&S #82 (July) sees adult and juvenile ducks in an ever-escalating war over who’s the best conjuror in ‘Magical Misery’ and by the time Daisy Duck deals with them, Donald is ready for a day of peace and quiet. Sadly, ‘Ring Wrongs’(AKA ‘Vacation Time’ from August’s Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #83 reveals that thanks to Huey, Louie and Dewey, he’s the target of a relentless wave of door-to-door salesmen and reacts with typical zest and vigour…

An inappropriate experiment in hypnosis transforms Donald (mentally) into a kangaroo and prompts an ‘Adventure Down Under’ (Four Color #159 August) with the eventually restored Drake and his nephews compelled to become ‘roo hunters to pay for return passage to Duckburg. They are mightily outmatched by Mournful Mary “Queen of the Kangaroos” until they meet some local aborigines and experience a change of heart.

Please be aware that – despite Bark’s careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling – some modern folk might be upset by his depictions from over seven decades ago.

‘If the Hat Fits’ is a gag-page of chapeau japery from Four Color #147 (May), that precedes a medium-length tale describing Donald’s efforts to master dancing in ‘The Waltz Kings’ from WDC&S #84 (September) counterbalanced a month later by #85’s ‘The Masters of Melody’ wherein the boys struggle to learn to play musical instruments…

‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the kids in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans.

After being temporarily stranded on an isolated reef, they discover monsters, a shipwrecked galleon, an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries and a particularly persistent phantom all blending into a supremely thrilling and beguiling mystery that has never dated…

WDC&S #86 exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’ whose smug hubris deprives him of a job he’s actually good at, after which ‘The Terrible Turkey’ from details the Duck’s frankly appalling efforts to secure a big bird for the Thanksgiving feast despite skyrocketing poultry prices…

Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas 1947 (cover-dated January 1948) sees the boys strive a little too late and much too hard to be ‘Three Good Little Ducks’ and ensure a wealth of swag on Christmas morning before one final single-pager sees kitchen confusion for Donald in ‘Machine Mix-up’ from Four Color #178 (December)…

With the visual verve done we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ provides erudite commentary for each Duck tale and Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’ before ‘Biographies’ reveals why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, Joseph Robert Cowles, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, R, Fiore, Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things.

We then close with an examination of provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.
Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Christmas on Bear Mountain” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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Yakari volume 18: The Wall of Fire


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominique and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-591-2 (Album PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Superb All-Ages Entertainment and Adventure… 9/10

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre AKA “Derib”. The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on The Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Le Journal de Spirou. Together, they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a few years later with their next collaboration.

Derib – equally au fait with enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s a crime that groundbreaking strips such as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic ever published dealing with AIDS), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet, but we still patiently wait in hope and anticipation…

Many of Derib’s stunning works over the decades feature his cherished Western themes; magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes. Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which first led him to deserved mega-stardom.

Debuting in 1969, Yakari follows the life of a young Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains and is set sometime after the introduction of horses by the Conquistadores but before the coming of modern Europeans.

The series – which has generated two separate animated TV series and a movie release last year – has achieved 40 albums thus far: a testament to the strip’s evergreen vitality and the brilliance of its creators, even though originator Job has moved on and Frenchman Joris Chamblain assumed the writer’s role in 2016.

Overflowing with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, young Yakari enjoys a largely bucolic existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of our delectation, however, the ever-changing seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fuss, fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart, brave… and can – thanks to a boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle – converse with all animals …

Originally released in 1993, la barrière de feu was the 19th European album, but – as always with the best books – the content and set-up are both stunningly simple and effectively timeless, affording new readers total enjoyment with a minimum of familiarity or foreknowledge required…

This time, the little wonder is embroiled in uncharacteristically dark deeds as a raiding party led by Wild Mane results in the loss of all the horses – except valiant pony Little Thunder who not only escapes but also raises the alarm and rouses the sleeping tribe.

As the adults set out on foot to recover their steeds and reclaim their honour, little Yakari tracks his equine friend and is amazed to find Little Thunder is trailing his stolen herdmates. As he follows, the loquacious lad meets a flying squirrel who kindly offers to act as an advance scout…

While the grown-ups are stymied by their cunning quarry’s tactics, the tiny tree-hugger rapidly reunites the boy with his horse and the trio set off together after the thieves. All too soon they have located the raiders, but instead of useless heroic gestures they sagely seek out Yakari’s father and lead his team to the thieves.

Dauntingly, it’s a nomadic convocation of thousands, and a retaliatory raid seems impossible. Moreover, something is shadowing the stalkers themselves, ever unseen but even getting close enough to steal supplies while they’re being carried! The adults are seriously considering swallowing their shame and retreating, but Yakari cannot let go of the notion that something is smarter than he is…

Ultimately, with help from his bestial buddies, the mystery is solved and the boy meets a new friend: a wounded lynx. The beautiful, cunning creature shows the curious kid a new trick: a sticky black liquid that oozes out of the ground and is ideal for sealing wounds.

When the shaman sees it he recognises it for all its many properties, including a tendency to burn, which gives Yakari’s father an inspired idea for countering the raiders’ superior numbers and getting back the tribe’s most treasured possessions…

Exotically enticing, deviously educational and wildly entertaining, this boldly action-packed and splendidly spectacular yarn sees Yakari’s gifts not only used to benefit his people and animal friends but also with the full acknowledgement of the adults he’s previously been unknowingly slighted by. Is our boy finally on the path to being a man?

Once again, Derib & Job display their astounding and compelling narrative virtuosity in another glorious graphic tour de force capturing the appealing courage of our diminutive heroes, and a visually stunning, seductively smart saga to delight young and old alike.

Yakari is one of the most unfailingly absorbing all-ages strips ever conceived and should be in every home, right beside Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, Asterix and The Moomins.
Original edition © Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard s. a.) 1993. All rights reserved. English translation 2020 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Hubert Reeves Explains BiodiversitY


By Hubert Reeves, Nelly Boutinot & Daniel Casanave, coloured by Claire Champion and translated by Joseph Laredo (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital release only

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Lasting Lessons Lavishly Limned and Laudably Learned… 9/10

It’s sometimes easy to forget that other countries have national treasures, too: popular spokes-folk sharing their passions for the good of us all. Living folk, that is, not pilfered artefacts taken into “protective custody” by most western “explorers” whilst visiting other people’s continents: that’s just shameful and unforgivable…

Sir David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Professors Brian Cox, Lucy Worsley, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and many others have translated their passions into education, elucidation, mass entertainment and good works, but they are not alone and most nations have their own voices of wonder, reason and sanity. For French-speakers, one of those effulgent natural educators is Professor Hubert Reeves.

Born Quebecois in 1932, raised and educated in Montreal but now resident in Paris, the physicist and professional educator is a major name in Thermonuclear Reactions, Light Nuclei and “Positronium”; advises NASA and has – since 1965 – been Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

In later life he became the go-to guy for science stuff on French TV and has contrived a series of bande dessinée detailing Earth’s rapidly dwindling and almost expired bounties. Following the translated book featured here – which started life in 2017 as Hubert Reeves explique: La bioversité – he turned his sagacious eye to Oceans and Forests, which I’ll probably get around to later, assuming we still have any next year…

Working with co-writer Nelly Boutinot (vice-president of the Humanity and Biodiversity Association) and publisher/illustrator Daniel Casanave (Shelly; Romantica; Une Aventure rocambolesque) the Man of Letters has here inserted himself into a gentle and laconic nature ramble with a group of school children exploring lush countryside which inescapably includes all our mighty works. Delivered with simple but strictly factual directness in a captivating cartoon style that enchants and seduces, the relationships and shared history of cities, suspension bridges and other technologies is deconstructed in terms of their impact on the natural world.

Clarifying and connecting the link between microorganisms and petrochemicals; weather cycles and climate change; the balance between prey and predators in healthy ecosystems; the impact of invasive species (both deliberately imported and free-roaming); the cost to us all of every extinction and the no-brainer importance and function of the oxygen cycle that keeps us all alive, Le Professeur makes his case and proves his points while exulting in the majesty and complexity of existence…

Explained with stunning clarity using powerful symbols and examples from all across the embattled globe, yet still able to end on an optimistic note, Hubert Reeves Explains Biodiversity affords a superb and satisfying life lesson that belongs in every classroom, library and boardroom. Get it for the kids, or maybe they’ll get it for you…
© 2019 – LE LOMBARD (DARGAUD-LOMBARD s.a.) – CASANAVE, REEVES, & BOUTINOT

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Billy Hazelnuts & Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird


By Tony Millionaire (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-701-8 (Billy Hazelnuts HB) 978-1-56097-917-3 (Crazy Bird HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Gobsmacking Graphic Wonderment… 9/10

Cartoonists have more than their fair share of individuals possessing a unique perspective on the world. Elzie Segar, Ronald Searle, Charles Addams, George Herriman, Gerald Scarfe, Rick Geary, Steve Bell, Berke Breathed, Ralph Steadman, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening, Norman Dog, Gary Larson – the list is potentially endless. Perhaps it’s their power to create entire sculptured worlds coupled with the constant promise of vented spleen that so colours their work – whether they paint or draw.

Born Scott Richardson, Tony Millionaire clearly loves to draw and does it very, very well; seamlessly referencing classical art, the best of children’s books and an eclectic blend of pioneer draughtsmen like George McManus, Rudolph Dirks, Cliff Sterrett, Frank Willard, Harold Gray as well as the aforementioned Segar and Herriman with European engravings from the “legitimate” side of the ink-slinging biz. He especially cites Johnny Gruelle (Raggedy Ann and Andy) and English illustrator Ernest H. Shepard (The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh) as formative influences.

As well as assorted children’s books and the fabulous Sock Monkey, Millionaire produces powerfully bizarre weekly strip Maakies: delineating the absurdly rude, crude and surreal adventures of an Irish monkey called Uncle Gabby and his alcoholic nautical comrade Drinky Crow. You really should see Drinky Crow’s Maakies Treasury for further details and lots of riotous reprobate shenanigans.

In 2007, he produced the acclaimed and award-winning Billy Hazelnuts. It’s the salutary tale of a Golem built from garbage by oppressed, vengeful rats and mice. Originally a ghastly, fly-bedecked monstrosity, Billy is rescued and redeemed by little girl/mad scientist Becky who gives him Hazelnut eyes and a fresh-baked confectionary body, after which they undertake a series of incredible adventures in and around the solitary domain of Rimperton Farm.

Apart from conquering the unknown through science, Becky’s major goals in life are having uniquely fantastic adventures and avoiding the unwelcome attentions of prissy nerd and aspiring poet Eugene. However, just as she and Billy explore the heavens above them, the odious ode-ster – fuelled by rejection – turns to sky-borne piracy, leading a crew of robots… until they mutiny…

Thankfully Hazelnuts is a forgiving loon and accepts his apology just in time to bring him aboard their new animal ark for a showdown with the mechanical malcontents and an eye-popping exploration of the starry night…

 

In 2021 the entire crew returned for further fantastic frolics in another strident, striking, fantastical folktale voyage. Irascible, good-hearted, fiery-tempered and super-strong, Billy is adapting to life on the farm, but has a few philosophical problems with the natural world: notably everything in it is icky, oozy and wants to eat everything else in it.

After a titanic tussle with the farm cat and an owl, Billy reluctantly takes responsibility for a newly hatched owl chick – an ugly, vicious, violent baby brute that keeps consuming whole chunks of his baked pre-fab body…

After consulting the confectionary conjuror and all-around wise man Rupert Punch, Billy resolves to return the chick to its lost mother, undertaking a hazardous and utterly surreal journey through Millionaire’s incredible signature land, sea and sky-scapes, with the malevolent and opportunistic farm cat “assisting”. He has to hurry though: the ungrateful fledgling has already eaten the back of his head and an entire arm…

Rendered in Millionaire’s captivating monochrome line, this is another darkly frantic race against time and charmingly belligerent fantasy yarn with the requisite happy ending that will appeal to kids on any age, full of action, wonder, imagination and good intent, clearly promising that the author will soon be the worthiest contemporary successor to Baum, Sendak, the Brothers Grimm and Lewis Carroll.

Brilliant, scary, poignant and lovely, make Billy Hazelnuts a part of your leisure-life now.
© 2005, 2010 Tony Millionaire. All rights reserved.

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The Moomins and the Great Flood


By Tove Jansson, translated by David McDuff (Sort Of Books)
ISBN: 978-1-90874-513-2 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Heartfelt, Fantastic, Perfect… 10/10

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic primal tools like pen and ink, manipulating slim economical lines and patterns to manifest sublime realms of fascination, whilst her deeply considered dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols.

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and practically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Her father Viktor was a sculptor, her mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars and Per Olov became a cartoonist/writer and photographer respectively. The family and its tight-knit intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom – or immortal kids’ fantasy – as the piece they were all destined to act in.

After intensive study (from 1930-1938, at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris) she became a successful exhibition artist throughout the troubled Second World War period. She was immensely creative in numerous fields, and began her first novel as war clouds began blighting Europe in 1939. As she recounts in her Preface to the 1991 Scandinavian edition, it soon became too much and she laid it aside. Only once the war was over did she acquiesce to the urgings of friends to complete it.

In 1945 the first fantastic Moomins adventure was published: SmÃ¥trollen och den stora översvämningen – The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood – a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian, misfit trolls and their strange friends, all searching for something precious but now lost in the aftermath of a terrible calamity…

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930-1953 she worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for Swedish satirical magazine Garm, and achieved some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch (of Hitler in nappies) that lampooned the Appeasement policies of British Premier Chamberlain and other European leaders in the build-up to World War II.

She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929. Moomintroll was her signature character.

Literally.

The lumpy, lanky, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him “Snork”: claiming to have designed him in a fit of pique as a child. He was the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine and a response to losing an argument with her brother about Immanuel Kant.

The term “Moomin” came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited by warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen: creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Over the years Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a bit clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

The Moomins and the Great Flood didn’t make much of an initial impact but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 her second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many critics and commentators have reckoned the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of impending Nuclear Armageddon. I’m sure we all have some idea what that feels like, these days…

When it and her third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (1948’s Finn Family Moomintroll also occasionally seen as The Happy Moomins) were translated into English in 1952, they reaped great acclaim, prompting British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings, pretensions or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid. Mumintrollet och jordens undergäng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature, so she readily accepted the chance to invite her eclectic family into homes across the world.

In 1953, The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which inevitably captivated readers of all ages. Tove’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she had recruited brother Lars to help. He took over completely, continuing the feature until its end in 1975, captivating generations of children and adults alike and pushing Jansson’s gentle gang to the forefront of literary universes…

Eventually, after a succession of 9 novels, 5 picture books and that sublime strip, Tove returned to painting, writing and her other creative pursuits, generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera as well as 13 books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27th 2001 and her awards are too numerous to mention, but consider this: how many modern artists – let alone comics creators – get their faces on the national currency?

Her Moomin strips are now available in many languages – including English – and just waiting for you to enjoy. Expect untrammelled delight and delectation.

Available in hardback and ecologically sound digital editions, The Moomins and the Great Flood was out of print for years in Europe and never translated into English at all until 2005 – published by Schildts of Finland in a 60th anniversary of the series – probably because it’s slightly more sombre than the later tales. This particularly resplendent hardback hails from 2012, published in Britain by Sort Of Books and a charmingly moving little thing it is.

Neither comic strip or graphic novel, but rather a beautifully illustrated picture book, it remains unafraid to be allegorical or scary or sad yet closes with a message of joy and hope and reconciliation. Something else we could all do with…

It begins one day at the end of August as quietly capable Moominmamma and her nervous little son enter the deepest part of the great Forest. They are tired and hungry and have been searching for the longest time for Moominpappa. The big gallant oaf went off adventuring with the crazy wandering Hattifatteners and no one has seen him since. It’s been years…

Soon they are joined by a nervous Little Creature and, after escaping a Great Serpent, meet a blue haired girl named Tulippa who used to live in a flower…

Travelling together, they meet an old gentleman who lives in a tree containing a huge park full of sweets and treats, traverse a terrific abyss in a railway cart and narrowly escape an ant-lion. Persevering, the hopeful party continue their wandering search until encountering a band of Hattifatteners: joining them on their boat just as the skies begin to darken and a vast deluge begins…

The tumultuous voyage search takes all concerned through a world turned upside down by calamity, but eventually leads to a joyous reunion after all the assorted individualistic creatures affected by disaster pull together to survive the inundation and its effects…

Augmented with 14 stunning sepia-wash illustrations and 34 spot-illos in various styles of pen and ink scattered like cartoon confetti throughout the confection, this is a magical lost masterpiece for the young, laced with unfettered imagination, keen observation and mature reflection. It all enhances and elevates a simple kid’s story into a sublime classic of literature. Charming, genteel, amazingly imaginative and emotionally intense, this is a masterpiece of fantasy no one could possibly resist…
Text and illustrations © Tove Jansson 1945, 1991. English translation © David McDuff 2012.

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There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! – A Worm’s Story


By Gary Larson, coloured by Nick Bell (Little, Brown and Co/HarperCollins)
ISBNs: 978-0-31664-519-5 (HB) 978-0060932749 (PB)

We may not be rocket scientists but all cartoonists tend to lurk at the sharp end of the IQ bell curve – and then there’s Gary Larson. He could be a rocket scientist if he wanted to. Happily though, his inclinations tend towards natural history, Jazz and Life Sciences.

And making people laugh in a truthful, thinking kind of way…

Larson was born in 1950 and raised in Washington State. After school and college (also Washington State where he got a degree in communications), he bummed around and got a job in a music store – which he hated. During a self-imposed sabbatical he evolved into a cartoonist by submitting to Pacific Search Magazine) in Seattle, who astonished him by accepting and paying for his six drawings. Bemused and emboldened, Larson kept on doodling and in 1979 The Seattle Times began publishing his strip Nature’s Way. When The San Francisco Chronicle picked up the gag feature, they renamed it The Far Side…

From 1980 on, the Chronicle Syndicate peddled the strip with huge success. The Far Side became a global phenomenon and Larson’s bizarre, skewed and bitingly surreal strip – starring nature Smug in Tooth and Claw – almost took over the world. With 23 collections (over 45 million copies sold), two animated movies, calendars, greetings cards and assorted merchandise seemingly everywhere, the smartypants scribbler was at the top of his game when he retired the feature on January 1st 1995.

After fifteen years at the top, Larson wanted to quit while he was ahead. He still did the occasional promo piece or illustration but increasingly devoted his time to ecological causes and charities such as Conservation International. He is still passionately crusading for environmental reform – hell, even a slim simple common sense will do – and other issues affecting us all. Happily, on July 7th this year, he began releasing new material online: just go to the Far Side website and check out “New Stuff”…

Of course, even back in the 1990s, he couldn’t stop drawing or thinking or, indeed, teaching even if officially off the clock. In 1998 he crafted this stunningly smart and cool children’s book for concerned and nervous adults. It was a huge hit and is more relevant now than ever…

There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! brilliantly, mordantly tells a parable within a fable and serves up a marvellously meaningful message for us to absorb and ingest whilst simultaneously making us laugh like loons and worry like warts.

One day underground, a little worm having dinner with his folks finds something unnatural and icky in his meal and starts bemoaning the lowly status and general crappiness of his annelidic existence (look it up, I’m showing off and making a comedic point too…).

To counter this outburst of whingeing, Father Worm offers up a salutary tale to put things into their proper perspective…

Thus begins the tragic tale of Harriet, a beautiful human maiden living – she believed – at one with the whole world. Dwelling in the woods, she was enraptured with the bountiful Magic of Nature and on one particularly frolicsome day encountered cute squirrels, lovely flowers, icky bugs, happy birds, playful deer, tortoises and every kind of creature… and completely missed the point about all of them…

Masterfully mimicking an acerbic fairytale teller, Larson delivers an astoundingly astute and unforgettable ecology lesson, equally effective in educating young and old alike about Nature’s true nature – and yet still miraculous wonders – whilst maintaining a monolithic amount of outrageous comic hilarity.

This sublime illustrated yarn became a New York Times Best Seller on its release and still serves as a fabulous reminder of what really clever people can achieve even if they don’t do rocket science…

There’s a HAIR in My Dirt! is one of the smartest, funniest and most enticingly educational kid’s books ever created and should be on every school curriculum. Since it isn’t, perhaps it’s best if you picked one up for the house…?
© 1998 FarWorks, Inc. All rights reserved.